Healthy Pets Dog Insurance

[hamfam]

Alright I know I should have asked first BEFORE signing up but I didn't

Anyone else signed up with Healthy Pets and had to claim, it seems too good to be true when compared to most others - £5000 vet fees , ongoing conditions with no time limit and up to £5000 per condition, no limit to the number of simultaneous ongoing conditions, plus all the other bits and bobs for a quarter of the price of petplan.

Did i miss something? I wont be too heartbroken if i screwed up as its not alot of money, but i would prefer to find out now rather than when i make a claim 

[hamfam]

Here is the Healthy pet link i forgot to put in!

[Jane S]

Don't know about this company specificially but their insurance is underwritten by Axa, one of the "biggies" so nothing to worry about from that aspect

[Colin]

I had Jimmy insured with Healthy Pets - I'm afraid my experience wasn't very good. For a while he had stomach problems with numerous visits to the vet. When I put the claim in they refused to pay out, as each individual visit to the vet came under the excess - I had to get the vet to contact them to say all the visits were part of the same on-going problem. They still quibbled over every small thing and it took ages to sort out - I never got the full amount from them, I eventually got ground down by all the correspondence going backwards and forwards and just gave in to preserve my sanity. 

Hopefully my case was a one-off - but I didn't renew the policy and wouldn't use them again.

[debbie321]

I'm with healthy pets too.  I have only made one claim and they paid up without querying anything!  I had only paid about 2 instalments and then claimed over £80!

This was also for a tummy bug - as I was so worried about Ben I called the vet to meet me at the surgery at about midnight ................. they didn't query that at all 

I pay £5.10 per month for the gold cover.

[maximus]

Max is with healthy pets so this is intresting, we havent claimed at all yet but his trip the the vet for his bad paws last week came just below the excess, he has another follow up appointment tuesday so i think i will be claiming for the two combined visits. Hopefuly they wll pay.....

[AnnieM]

Oh, that seems really cheap.     I just (Saturday) signed up for M&S insurance as I thought that was really reasonable compared to some.  I wonder if it is too late to change it, it is actually almost half the price, not quite as good cover, but still pretty good foir the money.

[Maria]

£5000 vet fees , ongoing conditions with no time limit and up to £5000 per condition, no limit to the number of simultaneous ongoing conditions, plus all the other bits and bobs for a quarter of the price of petplan.

The way I've read this is that once you have used up £5000 on one illness/condition, you would no longer be covered for that? If so, that's what happened with my SIL's springer,(don't know who he was insured with though).He developed arthritis fairly young,and his limit expired by the time he was about 8, so they had to fund that themselves and keep paying the premiums so he was covered for other things.
Personally, I prefer lifetime cover with annual limits (which is what I thought Petplan was), as opposed to a limit per condition - I'd be worried that one of mine could get a condition which needed ongoing treatment, and I wouldn't have thought that £5000 would last for many years (esp if it was something like arthritis or diabetes). We're with M&S (Boysie should be sponsored by them), and they have been brilliant. Maybe a bit more expensive but we're now excess free as well.

[rocky]

I am in the middle of a claim with healthy pets insurance I hope it all goes smoothly I will let you know, I have to say I am a bit worried now as mine has been over numerous visits to the vets with rocky so I hope they dont quible about it.

[jann]

Yes I agree with Maria,that's how I read it too. I am also with M&S. lifetime cover £7000 a year and no excess. I think it's about £10 a month (have to check that) Only had it 4 months and made a claim after 2 months for a minor problem,only about £35 and they paid it all no problems .

[hamfam]

The way I've read this is that once you have used up £5000 on one illness/condition, you would no longer be covered for that? If so, that's what happened with my SIL's springer,(don't know who he was insured with though).He developed arthritis fairly young,and his limit expired by the time he was about 8, so they had to fund that themselves and keep paying the premiums so he was covered for other things.
Personally, I prefer lifetime cover with annual limits (which is what I thought Petplan was), as opposed to a limit per condition - I'd be worried that one of mine could get a condition which needed ongoing treatment, and I wouldn't have thought that £5000 would last for many years (esp if it was something like arthritis or diabetes). We're with M&S (Boysie should be sponsored by them), and they have been brilliant. Maybe a bit more expensive but we're now excess free as well.

I know what you mean and i did look at m&s but with them the limit is £7000 per year total cost if i remember correctly, so you would be in the same boat if heaven forbid your pet accumulated several conditions requiring treatment, that said i almost signed on the line with m&s then i came accross healthy pets and looking at the way premiums rise with pet age i figured that most long term illnesses seem to occur from 8-9 years, £5000 is above average for pet insurance from what i've seen but i have to say i have no idea of vetinary costs for major illnesses or how long this would last for arthritis or diabetes, I would not have thought that the drug bill would be that expensive? Pehaps someone could enlighten us?

[hamfam]

I am in the middle of a claim with healthy pets insurance I hope it all goes smoothly I will let you know, I have to say I am a bit worried now as mine has been over numerous visits to the vets with rocky so I hope they dont quible about it.

I would appreciate if you would let me know what happens to the claim, I'm not at all sure i have made the right decision but the cost is   between 1/4 and 1/2 of the competitors so i figure i can change in 3 to 6 months if needed with no penalty the only problem being if Lucy were to get a long term illness within that time.

[suki1964]

I read M+S as being up to £7k per year per condition. So if diabetes AND Heart problems AND getting run over (dog forbid) you can claim up to £21k??

Bills are very easily run up at vets when anything serious is happening. I know I paid over £200 just for an ultrasound a few years back and if there had been any hope of treatment for Gunnar, i would have been looking at a bill for thousands. In Alfies first year I claimed back over £1k from M+S and that just for the things I could be bothered with claiming or were actually covered. Drugs for animal use are so much more expensive then the human equivilient. The drug companies put the mark up on them and then govt tax and duty on top of that.Vets do their best to sell them at cost. I remember there was a report on Countryfile last year where farmers were popping over to Eire to buy drugs as they were nearly half the price then in the uk.

The thing i do like about M+S is they actually do cover for castration, animal behaviourist etc as long as the vet has reccomended for behavioural problems. Paid out for Alfies 121 and castration no quibbles

[Wightpaws]

Interesting comments above will let you know how I get on as Snoopy is issured by Healthy Pets and we are just about to put a claim in for his problems over the past weeks, I know they have been really helpful over the phone and have not had any problems to date.

[Maria]

The way I've read this is that once you have used up £5000 on one illness/condition, you would no longer be covered for that? If so, that's what happened with my SIL's springer,(don't know who he was insured with though).He developed arthritis fairly young,and his limit expired by the time he was about 8, so they had to fund that themselves and keep paying the premiums so he was covered for other things.
Personally, I prefer lifetime cover with annual limits (which is what I thought Petplan was), as opposed to a limit per condition - I'd be worried that one of mine could get a condition which needed ongoing treatment, and I wouldn't have thought that £5000 would last for many years (esp if it was something like arthritis or diabetes). We're with M&S (Boysie should be sponsored by them), and they have been brilliant. Maybe a bit more expensive but we're now excess free as well.

I know what you mean and i did look at m&s but with them the limit is £7000 per year total cost if i remember correctly, so you would be in the same boat if heaven forbid your pet accumulated several conditions requiring treatment, that said i almost signed on the line with m&s then i came accross healthy pets and looking at the way premiums rise with pet age i figured that most long term illnesses seem to occur from 8-9 years, £5000 is above average for pet insurance from what i've seen but i have to say i have no idea of vetinary costs for major illnesses or how long this would last for arthritis or diabetes, I would not have thought that the drug bill would be that expensive? Pehaps someone could enlighten us?

The M&S £7000 pa limit is still higher than £5000 pa (and they also have separate limits for behavioural, complimentary etc). The way M&S works is that you can claim up to their limits pa(for each type of claim- which most vets think is more than adequate). On renewal, prior years claims are not accumulated, because there is no limit per condition. And sadly conditions like arthritis / hip problems and diabetes can occur in younger dogs.
Like I said we chose this type of policy because of our SIL's experience, and luckily we did, because if we had gone for a limit per condition policy,Boysie would have been virtually up to that by now because of the claims we had for x-rays, hydrotherapy and the ongoing glucosamine for his back legs.